The ship carrying nearly 4,000 Volkswagen cars is still burning off the Azores

Last Wednesday, February 16, a fire broke out on the cargo ship Felicity Ace, a Panama-flagged vessel carrying 3,965 vehicles of various brands from the Volkswagen Group. The 22 crew members were rescued without difficulty by the Portuguese Navy and brought to safety, but the teams fighting the fire at sea are facing a problem. One week after the fire started, the blaze is still active.

Under normal circumstances, putting out this fire would not be simple, but in this case it is even more complex. The major problem firefighters face in extinguishing the fire destroying the large cargo ship is the lithium-ion batteries. This puts at risk all the cars of the brands Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, Bentley, Lamborghini and Bugatti that were travelling from Germany to the United States.

Electric cars, a problem in fires

Studies carried out to date show that electric vehicles are less prone to catching fire than those powered by combustion engines. These lack flammable elements such as fuel and engine oil, so they are harder to ignite.

But electric cars pose many problems in the event of a fire. A car with a combustion engine presents many difficulties when it comes to putting out a fire. Fuel and engine fluids create serious problems for extinguishing the blaze and complicate the work. In the case of electric vehicles, however, the presence of batteries adds further problems. The battery charge makes it very delicate to handle the vehicles while fighting the fire, turning the operation into a highly complex one.

The presence of vehicles of both types, with combustion engines and with electric drive, makes it very difficult to put out the fire on the ship. Extinguishing a fire on a vessel this large is already very complicated, but the charge makes the operation much harder. Many of the vehicles carried by the Felicity Ace are not expected to be saved, so the losses are estimated at around 200 million euros.

Once the fire is extinguished, the cargo ship will be towed to a port in Europe or the Bahamas, where all the damage will be assessed and it will be checked how the fire affected the cars that were not directly damaged by the flames.

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